Clarkston, GA, is the most diverse square mile in the United States. Watch how love, care, and meeting people's needs goes a long way for this refugee community.
To relieve a lot of the pressures that the refugees face when they enter America, we gather furniture so they don’t have to sleep on the floor, mattresses. We get rice and beans. Just basic necessities that they have so they feel comfortable when they come here. Then we try to go and spend time with them and get to know them. And then after they stay approximately a year in an international school and learn a little bit of English, then we will look at taking them and trying to sponsor them for education in a private school. That way they have a really good foundation.
I went to Clarkson and we took laptops and we started looking for scholarships for some of them and we were blessed with 12, six years ago, 12 scholarships that you could use to go to any private school in Georgia.
We make 27 lunches a day. Twenty-seven of the kids can’t afford to bring their own lunch. Ninety percent of the kids that come don’t do breakfast so for some of them this is all they’re going to have in their belly until tonight, six or seven o’clock and they’ll get a bowl of rice for dinner so that’s why we like to give them lunches to make sure they can have something in their belly to be able to take tests and be able to focus in the classroom so they can give us their best performance.
When I pass out lunches to the kids in the morning so many of them will come up and hug me. At times they get so rambunctious they nearly knock me off my feet. But the hugs and pure joy that they show is just indescribable.
God answered my prayers. I get to attend an Adventist school and I get to receive a 4.0 not because of my ability but because of God’s help.
When she came to an Adventist school, she could just focus on her grades and focus on being the child that she wanted to be and not get teased. Actually, she’s praised for all of her accomplishments that she has achieved. We started six years ago with 12 and then we went to like 20 and then, I think, I think it was like 25. We currently have 61 kids that we help and then we also have some kids that a different religions. We bring them to Adventist schools so we have energy and desire to help anyone.
This is God. This is God’s hand in this. I’m just a little part of His great plan.
I just want to say, ‘Don’t be afraid to go out and befriend or get to know a refugee because I’m pretty sure they will be happy to have you in their life and you never know, they might change your life too.’
